


a key for every lock

by dimthestars



Category: Skeleton Key - Dessa (Song)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Inspired by Music, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimthestars/pseuds/dimthestars
Summary: Even in her dreams, she encounters locked doors.  Big ones and small ones, doors that she couldn't dream of going though, and ones that don't seem like doors at all.She can open all of them.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	a key for every lock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GaleWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaleWrites/gifts).



Even in her dreams, she encounters locked doors. Big ones and small ones, doors that she couldn't dream of going though, and ones that don't seem like doors at all. 

She can open all of them.

In her dreams, she always has the key. It's bound to her like a curse, like a blessing, like an heirloom she could never part with. She is as much the key as it is her. The Skeleton Key will live on in one form or another, from her mother to her, to the child she might carry one day.

It claimed them, every human from her mother's family line, and even as she wonders if she'll one day find a door too heavily locked to open, she is aware that there is no such thing. There never had been, and she's not afraid there never will be.

One day she'll open the doors to Heaven, to Hell, to all the afterlives that linger, waiting to call her to their planes of existence. She'll pick one, open the door, and pass through. Maybe she'll stay and maybe she won't, maybe she'll walk through every barred and blocked gate after she dies, or maybe not.

Maybe, when her long, long life comes to a pause, she'll sit outside an old oak door, one carved with care and love, and hum to herself, sing songs of her family and friends, tell stories to those who want to see into what lies behind that heavy wood. She'll play gatekeeper, she'll play hostess. She'll play so many games and never get bored. She'll have every world at her fingertips and, when one gets dull, she'll pass into the one next to it.

Her mother never died, not in the same way other people do. She knows she won't either. Her mother left because she got bored, went wandering with her own Skeleton Key. There are doors to unlock in every world, every strange and twisted reality that lies at their feet. 

Her mother found her way to the universe across the street, made sure she had her own key, and she's not seen her since.

Maybe that's how it was doomed to be, bring something into the world, then leaving it to fend for itself. That's how it is with everything else, isn't it? Humans are the ones who coddle their young, and she expects that her mother stayed longer than she would have in any other situation.

She knows her mind is wandering, trudging through a slew of thoughts, of open possibilities. She wonders about her own child, about the little thing she could choose to bring into whatever world she deems fit. Will that small creature love the freedom too? Will they revel in the idea of every door being open to them, of no secrets hidden behind locks and lies? Because lies too, she can find her way around. Not all doors are the kind you can touch, not all doors are made from steel, or wood, or glass.

She doesn't want one right now, a child of her own, but the idea dances across her mind every so often. Instead, she wants the idea of running, of racing through all those barriers and barricades, finding her way into anything she'd like. She wants to hear the whispers of the people who though they knew her mother, or maybe it was her grandmother? Their eyes linger on her face, gasping at how similar she looks to all those women before her.

There's a joy she derives in smiling at them, waving them off and telling her own lies. The children know better, feel her oddness, the way she is not of the world, but rather next to it. She does not bend to the elements, to laws, or rationale. She is a wonder, and a terror and a stranger all dressed up in a familiar face.

Some of them look on in wonder, knowing the glittering keys she wears on her neck, in her ears, dangling from bangles on her wrists, are things of power and promise. Some of them try to steal one or two from her, but they never get the right ones. The Skeleton Key is wrapped tight around her and it will not be broken away by the grasping, curious hands of small children and daring teenagers.

Sometimes she considers giving one or two away. Not her proper key, of course, but a decoy, and telling that dear, sweet person that they've earned it. That the gift she gives them is a taste of freedom, of safety, of whatever they need.

And it might be true sometimes, there's a little magic in every one of her keys, a bit of power caught in the teeth of each.

Other times, she thinks about it in darker terms. A key for a trap, a key to open a door to what someone really deserves. She's seen men take away the keys of the women they said they loved, parents lock away their children for no reason. Those times, she does act on her desires, leaving just a little something in the night before passing back through all her open doors.

She's not cruel, never had the taste for it, and always hated when others didn't seem to feel the same.

There are impossible things in the world, beauty unspeakable, heartache that wretches and leaves people falling to their knees. She knows what it's like to be impossible, knows what it means to have the world look at her as if she should have never been able to exist.

And, sometimes she wonders, in the darkness, tucked away in whatever place she's claimed for the moment, if there are others like her. Other Skeleton Keys, other vessels, others who know what it's like. Or maybe, she muses, there aren't keys but locks. Maybe there is someone trailing after her, shutting her doors and trying to keep others from following.

If there are other walkers who wield impossible, strange objects that exist within the worlds, what would she do if she met one? Would she run from them or would she find someone who understood her?

Would she fall in love? In lust? In a deep and unflinching friendship?

She likes the idea of the last one, the idea of walking hand in hand with someone, as she opens every door, and they, whoever they are, locking up before they vanish through to the next possibility.

She smiles in the darkness and gets to her feet, not needing light to find her way to the entrance to the building she'd been staying in. Her key turns in the lock, and she smiles, patting the door with gentle gratitude before she starts forth into the night.

Where there's a key, she thinks, there's a lock and it's time for her to see what she can do about getting to that universe across the way, or at least, to the bridge between them, and maybe when she gets there, a door will be waiting.

A door, or a lock, an opportunity.


End file.
